Currie et al (2006, p32) describe “cultural duplicity”, the “missing discourse” used by participants to police and regulate behaviour and in doing so tells us a great deal about the dominant culture and how power exercised through systems and
processes are used to invoke unwritten rules that regulate and police behaviour. “I think it’s so rude”, year 11 student, Maisy says when discussing the defacing of Rob’s poster in vignette 3. Lilly, year 9, states that Levi’s behaviour towards Brett in vignette 1 was “being mean”; the language used by students rarely reflected the language used by staff in schools, or indeed policy. In actively sidestepping the discourse are they sidestepping the thorny issue of naming bullies. Is this a
reflection of a lack of skills, knowledge and capacities to deal with what they see as a particularly challenging emotive issue, where they are caught between two ends of a binary dilemma? Does student reticence in naming bullying and bullies suggest a denial and disengagement around the issues consciously position themselves against the label of bullying currently emphasised in school cultures. Rather than identifying individual behaviours can the discourse around bullying examine and raise awareness of the material, performative and repetitive objects and acts which take place within cultural and social settings, which exposes a different aspect of power in reinforcing and informing individual behaviour?
By reframing power as a force which alters the shape of freedom of choice, placing constraints on individuals and groups, within their social and cultural networks, rather than individualised and positioned within the context of the bully victim binary, would it be possible to give both students and staff in school a greater insight into what is meant by bullying? If power limits individual’s freedoms, there is the need to untangle the difficulty in distinguishing how the course of action chosen is influenced by a variety of other agents. Moving away from personal individual power we need to examine and deconstruct power and illustrate how it is not concrete, but fluid and malleable, flowing between individuals and groups, social, political and cultural settings and demonstrate how it can change its shape and composition responding to the boundaries and networks it encounters. To use an analogy with liquid, it can be likened to water, in that it can exist in many elements, steam, water, snowflakes or ice, to fill the gaps it finds, and set the boundaries of action or non-action.
Whatever power touches it provokes a reaction, whether this is reactive in the sense of active change or inert in that it does not participate or engage. Each individual or group will be culturally and socially different in that it responds in ways that are unique and dynamic to that particular circumstance or situation, and the forces or boundaries that exist. The actions of any individual will depend upon the influences of many including peers, parents and staff, and be intersected by gender, class, race and sexuality. The difficulty of ascertaining whether actions are free are bound up with our identity, and our identity is formed through and in immersion in social networks. How students think, feel and reason, how they identify in the social and cultural settings in which they exist and those they feel excluded from, all form part of the boundaries that limit or influence their actions. The actions of any individual will be defined by their social boundaries. Power is not an individual possession, but is made explicit through rules, norms and customs that are shared and enabled through inter and intra-subjective actions of many different actors. Hayward (1998, p12) defines power “as the capacity to act upon the boundaries that constrain and enable social action” by changing shape or direction. Students will adhere to a rule whether tacit or explicit that is intended to change the behaviour of another student, in direct contrast to freedom, which allows individuals to shape the boundaries that define what the field of action is by acting in ways that affect the boundaries that define for them what is possible.
Discourses of culturally endorsed ways of thinking and talking that carry meaning beyond the immediate context and is used to sustain a particular meanings. The difficulty of a shared understanding of bullying is rooted in the common sense, widely accepted, hugely influential literature of educational psychology which has increased our understanding of bullying as a problem and given a framework for analysis. Rooted in individualised and personal attributes we have yet to unpick the wider social and cultural norms in which this ‘problem of bullying’ exists. If we widen the lens and look at distinct and unique mechanisms embedded in our
understanding of bullying, and how this sits in a larger network of rules, regulations and norms, and how these have been brought about, then we might begin to slowly untangle the complex web of inter and intra actions that inform individual actions and behaviours, and help make power less illusive. At the moment policy gives little clear guidance on this and allows both student and adult room for misinterpretation, and has the effect of perpetuating and leaving unresolved the gaps between policy and practice.
6.11 Conclusion
The findings evidenced in this chapter appear to highlight a number of absences and missing discourses available to students and staff. These include democratic structures, participatory engagement and a broader conceptualisation of power in developing definition of bullying and school policy. The lack of access to alternative discourses maintains the current hegemonic of educational psychology in defining and addressing bullying. This narrow framework presents as problematic,
challenging staff and students’ understanding and defining of bullying. The focus on the bully victim binary appearing to add to the frustration of students and staff in dealing with aggression and conflict. Coupled with a lack of clear guidance, there are few opportunities for staff and students to respond effectively, presenting further barriers to resolution. There is a need to move away from the conceptualisation of power in schools which is found in anti-bullying discourses present in current policy documents and evident in the discourse employed in school contexts. Opportunities to reframe power away from an individual skill or deficit, to one in which power is exercised through the monitoring of boundaries and networks. Perhaps the inclusion of a wider examination of social and cultural norms that enable and inform agency, will help to challenge heteronormative social and contextual power relationships and help develop an alternative broader definition of bullying.
7. Discussion
Introduction
This chapter offers a summary of the findings in answer to the research questions and draws on the findings presented in the previous two chapters. I consider and reflect on the existing body of research and discuss the theoretical and practical implications. The study’s limitations are then noted, before some final remarks on avenues for further research are made.
The research questions which have been addressed in this study are:
1. How is bullying conceptualised in the policy documents utilised in schools in Wales?
2. What are staff and student awareness of anti-bullying policies in schools? 3. What role do staff and students play in the development of school anti-
bullying policies?
4. What factors do staff and students in a secondary school context use to define and describe bullying?
Findings and general conclusions
The empirical chapters of this thesis contain three clear messages which emerge from the study about staff and student understanding of the definition of bullying:
1. The understanding and defining of bullying in school is informed
predominantly through the influence of psychology and reflected in policy which conceptualises bullying as an act of aggression between individuals where there is an imbalance of power.
2. The way staff and students viewed the act of bullying is rooted in the deficit model, whereby the individuals involved lack either skills, knowledge or understanding and require sanctions to enforce cultural and historical norms around gender, class, race and sexuality.
3. There was a difference in the focus of staff and students in school, with staff primarily focusing on personality and the correction of what were seen as deficits. Whilst students showed a reluctance to label in terms of the bully victim binary, focusing on emotions and their impact on behaviour.
4. There was little evidence provided by the participants in this research of meaningful participation and engagement with policy and its development.